


Ticking Away Last Regrets

by Eternal_Love_Song



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gift Fic, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 16:13:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4967629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eternal_Love_Song/pseuds/Eternal_Love_Song
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you close your eyes, you dream of their pain. There is a clock ticking away in your head of when they will die. When you see them, their death from their eyes flashes through your mind. This is your soulmate. That is their end. What do you do?</p><p>When you're Tony Stark, who thought that he was too unworthy to even have a soulmate, the answer is that you save the world and your soulmate with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ticking Away Last Regrets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EvilValenStrife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvilValenStrife/gifts).



> I wrote this to hurt someone's feelings, but decided to have mercy at the last moment.

He couldn't escape. From the time he was little, he had always had nightmares. Dreams of darkness and cold, being unable to move, endless dreaming that seemed never to leave him. Tony had been fairly good at ignoring it at first. It wasn't the only dream that he had, after all. Everyone had nightmares.

It wouldn't be until years later that he'd figure it out. Years of waking up freezing, shivering from the remembered cold of his dreams, leaving the lights on because his nightmares had made him fear the darkness. In that way, he was grateful to have the arc reactor in his chest. He didn't have to explain about being afraid of the dark, about reoccurring dreams and crippling cold, about why he needed the lights to be on in case he had another dream of all encompassing darkness; there was a nightlight in his chest and there was very little he could do about that. There was very little he would do about it at this point. It was probably one of the most useful misfortunes he'd ever suffered.

It wouldn't be until an alien attacked New York that he would learn the truth.

Tony was locked in place when he finally laid eyes on Captain America. Of all the times to finally find his soulmate, of all the times to have a premonition of death, of all the times for Tony to have a revelation about his entire life, it had to be while he was escorting a dangerous criminal, didn't it? It was almost too much to handle at once. Tony knew the principal facts about soulmates, everyone did. The plague of dreams that contained warnings about their life, that you would get a premonition of their death --potential death-- as soon as you saw them, but he never expected it to happen to him. Of course, now that it was happening, it all made sense. All those dreams of cold and ice, they were all that Captain America had been exposed to in Tony's lifetime. The man had been frozen, trapped at sea, and that prison had been a constant threat to his health and well being. Tony wondered how long the man would have been able to last if SHIELD hadn't found him.

Except that he didn't need to wonder, he knew. He had always known the day his soulmate would die, even if he'd stopped believing that he had one at all.

There was also a barrage of images flashing before his minds eye that he needed to process. Flashes of fighting as he saw through the Captain's eyes, a loud sound followed by light and pain and... nothingness. He had seen through his soulmates eyes, had seen how he would die, but there wasn't enough time to do anything about it. Soulmates always knew when their mate would die and Steve's clock was up today. There wasn't enough time. This wasn't enough time.

"Stark!" Natasha said forcefully, snapping him out of his own head. "Focus," she commanded. Her eyes were hard, determined, and knowing. Natasha could read his expression like it was written in Russian. She knew what a person looked like when they had just met their soulmate. She knew what it looked like when you thought you'd never find one, when you thought that maybe they had already died, when you thought yourself unworthy and had finally been proven wrong.

That was how Natasha had first bonded with him, once she stopped pretending to be someone else. She had told him all about her first meeting with her soulmate. Natasha had become horrified with herself when she looked into Barton's eyes, knew that he was her soulmate, and watched herself killing him from his own eyes. She hadn't been able to live with herself knowing that she could have destroyed one half of her soul. It was an eye opener, as she had put it, and Tony bonded with her over how utterly unworthy they were to have soulmates at all. 

Natasha understood him like few people did. Natasha, who kept a silver arrow around her neck to remind herself what she always fought for. Natasha, whose soulmate had been taken and had his mind tampered with by the alien they were currently taking into custody. He needed to focus, if not for his sake then for hers,  but he wasn't sure he would really be able to do it with the overload his mind just had.

Tony tried not to acknowledge his distraction. He didn't acknowledge the alien they had in custody. He didn't acknowledge his soulmate, though he couldn't say he managed to keep his eyes off the man, either.

"Let's get this show on the road!" Tony exclaimed, then he proceeded to try and ignore every single thing that was in the world around him. A world where he had a soulmate. A world where his soulmate was Captain America. A world where he was bonded to he person that he had hated for most of his life. A world where he was bonded to someone that was meant to die today.

Tony always did have the best luck...

When they got into an argument on the Helicarrier, Tony wanted to die. He never expected to have a soulmate, never thought he deserved one, but he had imagined it. He had imagined what it would be like to have someone care about him, to have someone that wanted to look out for him and protect him, to have someone that (hopefully) loved him. 

He never expected he'd have to defend his own worth to the one person that he thought would actually... care. He never expected to be systematically torn to pieces and ripped to shreds with a few well placed words. He never expected everything he was to mean so much nothing to his soulmate. Tony could have lived with having to prove himself to his soulmate, he had to prove his worth to himself, too. What he couldn't take was the lack of recognition in the man's eyes. Did he not know? Did he not recognize that Tony was his? Or was it just that he rejected Tony so entirely...

Tony couldn't bare to bring it up. Not after they'd had such a spectacular falling out. Not that there was much time to do so, anyway.

When the end came, what Tony thought could be the end, anyway, he regreted that. He thought about the millions of little moments when he could have said something to his soulmate. He thought about the time he had to say something, to beg for recognition, to steal a kiss, force a hug, cry out or scream or cling to the man for just a moment. He thought of that lost moment when they first met, the few quiet moments on the Helicarrier, the argument, their collaboration to fix the engine, the realization of what Loki was doing, he thought of the battle itself... So many lost moments...

Only Tony, only Tony goddamned Stark, would meet his soulmate on the day the man was suppose to die. Only Tony would end up bonded to the person he spent most of his life utterly hating (and the other half in an odd hero worship). Only Tony would end up arguing with his soulmate in one of the first conversation they'd ever had, when all he wanted to do was hold him and cry and be loved and love him. Only Tony would be unlucky enough to stare his soulmate straight in the eyes and not know if the man even knew who he was.

Only Tony would end him flying a nuke through a portal into space just to save his soulmates life.

He closed his eyes as he released the nuke, not knowing what would be waiting for him when they opened. If they opened. 

Space was a lot like being frozen in the ocean for seventy years. Tony would know, he'd been dreaming of it all his life. He just hoped that it worked out better for him than it had for Steve.

He couldn't breathe...

Darkness.

Cold.

Too much darkness.

Too much cold.

Tony thought that he might have been having a heart attack when he finally opened his eyes. There was a roaring in his ears and his heart was beating too fast. He felt both too cold and too stiff. But he felt alive. His soulmate was hovering above his face.

"Stark," Steve said, leaning his head against the suit's shoulder. "Oh god, we thought..."

"What happened?" Tony asked.

"We almost lost you," Steve told him. The hurt that was in Steve's eyes looked all too real, even if Tony wasn't sure he could believe it. "I thought... I thought I was wrong. You weren't suppose to die today, but I still thought... I thought you'd..."

Tony closed his eyes. If he concentrated, there was another date looming in his mind. That wasn't what mattered, though. What mattered was that he had time. He had time and he had a soulmate and Tony didn't intend to waste either of them. "What do you say we have shawarma? Celebrate the victory!"

Steve laughed. Or maybe he was crying, Tony couldn't fully tell. He was still a bit out of it. "Yeah..." Steve agreed. "We can do that." 


End file.
